Professional portrait photography skills

Friends who are interested in portrait photography must want to know the difference between snapshot and art, so let me share some points with you. Visual arts rely on harmony (shape, color, exposure), rhythm (texture) and arrangement of elements (scenery and model) to tell stories. When you can coordinate all these things and make them work in harmony, miracles will happen soon. The following techniques turn people who like photography into art.

First of all, I ran out

Using light is the most important thing in photography. Stop, look back and read the above sentence over and over again until it is deeply imprinted in your mind. After all, the essence of photography is to create an artistic interpretation by capturing the light of the scene. In essence, photography is painting with light.

Long before the invention of photography and flash, classical painters knew to arrange the main body of painting near the big window. The big window is like a huge soft box, which creates the right light and allows artists to capture the emotions they want. If there is no good light, don't press the shutter at all, otherwise the photos you take are no different from those taken by beginners with a fool machine.

Second, the theme.

There should be light when taking pictures, so the light should be listed first. It is definitely the cornerstone of photography. But the theme is equally important. A good theme is more useful than a beautiful model. Scenes, clothes, supports, decorations, gestures and emotional expressions combine to tell a story. Photographers must make sure that this is a story worth telling.

Third, focus.

Focusing is not only about where, but also about how deep the portrait needs to be. How blurred is the background/foreground? How many parts of the subject need to be focused on? With the right lens collocation, you can have considerable flexibility in this respect, which will have a great impact on the effect of your work.

In addition, don't ignore the possibility of changing the focus. Generally speaking, it is good to focus on the eyes, but I often focus on the lips. Sometimes in order to create a dramatic tension, I will focus on other places, such as my hands or what the model is holding. In one of my favorite works, I focused on the chessboard and used a shallow depth of field to make the subject's face very bright, and the highlights were seriously overexposed.

Fourth, the background

The general principle of background is to keep it simple. It is not difficult to take a good portrait of the environment (I took a lot), but it is easy to be distracted by the background. One thing that novices should pay attention to avoid is "fusion", that is, the background and foreground in photos seem to have a tendency to blend together. For example, be careful not to make the trees in the background seem to grow from the head of the subject.

Verb (abbreviation of verb) composition

A key difference between amateur works and professional works is composition. A professional portrait photographer will consider the shape, composition, frame, angle, negative space, and where to set the focus to get the greatest visual impact.

Six, color

If you shoot for the sake of color, you must ensure the harmony between colors. If the colors don't match, you can change clothes, scenes, etc ... until you match. Painters don't just grab a color, so why do photographers have to be at the mercy of color?

Seven. expose

Exposure is more than just getting the right exposure to record the scene. For example, you have to make a choice in a scene where the contrast between light and dark is particularly strong. You can properly expose the dark part or the bright part, but usually you can't have both. This may be a good thing, because you can choose high-profile shooting or low-key shooting, and use exposure to emphasize some parts and weaken others.

Eight, texture

Photos are two-dimensional, so it is difficult to show a good texture. The best way is to use strong shapes, compositions and light angles to set off the textures in the scene.